The world of modern psychology, of course, has moved well beyond its founder's theories. The past century has witnessed an explosion of often contradictory forms of treatment: Jungian archetype work, Adlerian therapy, Reichian orgone boxes, behavior modification a la B.F. Skinner, the Logotherapy of concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl--to name just a few of the diverging branches of practice that have grown from the Freudian trunk. The cure rates reported for these varied approaches are mostly lackluster, and, surprisingly, they differ little from one therapeutic regimen to the other. Even more dismaying to the professional psychological community is the conclusion reached in a recent study by professors Andrew Christensen and Neil Jacobson that therapy delivered by untrained nonprofessionals--folks without big offices and fancy credentials tacked on to their names--is just as effective, if not more effective than the far pricier work performed by academically qualified psychiatrists and psychologists.

Given the less than inspiring success rates, the daunting length of treatment (often years, if not decades on the couch), and the prohibitive cost of traditional psychotherapy (at least when the insurance company is not footing the bill), many sufferers are now opting for alternative forms of treatment--everything from self medication with herbal remedies, to encounter groups, to deep massage and therapeutic touch--to help allay their anxieties and relieve their depression. I recently got a taste of the dazzling variety of new techniques that are out there at the annual conference of the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy in New York City, where I joined over two hundred working therapists as they wandered wide-eyed through a veritable bazaar of workshops, panel discussions, and shamanistic rites. There were past-life therapists, Yoruba ritualists, psychic healers, Course in Miracles gurus, and practitioners of recently developed technologies like psychosynthesis and neurolinguistic programming--all of them smiling effusively and proffering their wares with missionary zeal. I left the weekend extravaganza with head spinning, chakras throbbing, and mind opened to the exhilarating new vistas on psychology's Wild West frontier.

But I also left with some nagging questions about the efficacy of methods whose scientific virginity has not yet been violated by a double-blind study or statistical analysis. Will the new "spiritual" approaches be any more (or perhaps less) successful in relieving mental anguish than old-fashioned psychotherapy? Not that I am a skeptic, mind you. As a spiritual writer who spent several years chasing enlightenment in Hindu India and Buddhist Asia, I have experienced time and again how spiritual practice can open up the deepest layers of one's own psyche, the numinous realm which pre-moderns called "the soul." What remains to be demonstrated, however, is whether practices taken out of the context of the living traditions of which they are a part and applied more or less indiscriminately toward purposes they were never intended to serve will do the trick.

A dash of Yoruba ancestor worship and a dollop of Hindu kirtan to chase away an urbanite's midwinter blues? No more strange, I suppose, than lying prostrate on a leather couch and prattling on about one's toilet training, or free-associating about last night's dreams. And arguably no less "scientific" either, if by "scientific" we mean "consistently proven to be effective." Every culture has developed its own ways and means to banish the inner demons that assail its members. Psychotherapy--underneath its high-gloss scientific veneer--may turn out to be a form of modern day shamanism, no better and no worse than shaking a rattle to clear one's aura, or burning effigies to exorcise offending spirits. What heals, in any event, may not be so much a particular therapeutic regimen, as the relationship of trust forged with a healer in whose caring presence one feels free to release one's burdens. Sometimes just being heard is enough.

Nevertheless, an even deeper question remains: What are we looking for when we seek psychological help? Are we seeking the revelatory--and invariably stormy and disruptive--journey of deep soul work, or are we simply trying to get through our days in one piece? If all we want is to feel better, then I am not sure that we need to ransack the treasure house of world mysticism. A little Prozac and access to a sympathetic ear may well do the trick. But many of us today are yearning for a more radical (in its original sense of striking directly at the root) transformation than orthodox therapy is likely to provide. We don't just want to feel better, we want to know who we are, and what we are here on earth to accomplish.

I do not mean to disparage those who want to feel better. Who doesn't? The real question from the spiritual standpoint is: can mental suffering be radically relieved--not just masked or somewhat alleviated and made bearable? Psychotherapy aims to return its patients to a semblance of psychological normalcy--whatever that might mean. The great mystical traditions, on the other hand, are unanimous in declaring that the normal human condition is shot through with illusion, suffering, and unease. Yet all alike hold out the hope that this misery can be substantially transmuted--if not perhaps eliminated entirely--through time-tested sacred practices like forgiveness, compassion for self and others, profound meditation, self inquiry, and surrender to a Higher Power. When we know who we are in the greater scheme of things, we will be happy. Not before.

The goal of psychotherapy is more modest. It was founded on the assumption that by ferreting out the childhood causes of our present-day neurotic patterns of thought and behavior we would become free of them. Experience demonstrates, however, that merely understanding the origins of one's malaise intellectually is not enough. Understanding how I came to develop low self-esteem as a child, for example, will not magically make me feel better about myself as an adult. Something more needs to be added to the equation--namely faith and intention. The challenge of spiritual therapy is to provide effective techniques for helping believers and nonbelievers alike to reconnect with their own innate will to believe in themselves and in the larger possibilities of the world around them. Faith heals.

But how exactly do we develop faith in ourselves? The answer that the wisdom traditions give is counterintuitive. They tell us that we do not develop faith in ourselves by focusing on the self, its symptoms, and healing, as psychotherapy does. Just the opposite: we uplift ourselves by looking away from the self and its narrow orbit of concerns and toward the mysterious existence of the Other--God, our neighbors, the greater society, the universe itself. We possess ourselves most fully, ironically, when we give ourselves away selflessly to the greater-than-self, and not when we pander to the ego and its insatiable need to "feel better."

This "turning toward the Other" is radical medicine indeed, and not at all what Freud and company had in mind when they developed the introverted practices of psychoanalysis at the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet there is surprising new evidence that cultivating a devotional attitude toward life may be the best antidote for the infirmities that plague the postmodern soul. In his keynote address to the conference on spirituality and psychotherapy, David Lukoff, an expert on spiritual issues in clinical practice, quoted a variety of studies which demonstrate that religious believers as a class are healthier than nonbelievers, that they are less prone to substance abuse, that they are four times less likely to commit suicide, and that they are more likely to recover, and to recover more quickly, from heart surgery than their agnostic counterparts. He also cited the growing body of research that shows prayer is a powerful aid in both physical and psychological healing. Lukoff went on to assert that lack of religious belief is a risk factor equivalent to tobacco and alcohol abuse for a wide assortment of illnesses of the body and the mind.

Still, the professional psychological community has been slow to integrate these findings into its practice. Freud's famous antipathy to religion, which he viewed as an essentially infantile search for the unbounded love and protection we experienced in earliest childhood, still colors the thinking of many psychotherapists. This view is articulated by Barry Farber, the Chair in Clinical Psychology at Columbia Teacher's College, who says that spirituality is often used "in the service of denying death, disallowing the inherent complexity of life, and avoiding hard work on oneself and relationships." Farber quotes the lyrics of Billy Joel: "Some people hope for a miracle cure, some people see the world as it is."

Yet I wonder if the real divide is, as Barry Farber suggests, between a head-in-the-sand spirituality, which pretends that everything is perfect or about to become so, on the one hand, and an unblinking psychological realism, on the other hand. Far from denying suffering and death, genuine spirituality (as opposed to the spirituality-lite that is indeed endemic today) forces us to confront the transience and unsatisfactory state of our lives head on. It tells us that our suffering comes from the ego's misguided effort to perpetuate itself as an isolated entity separate and apart from the greater life beyond our skins. The ego's attitude of "me against the world" leads inevitably to conflict in all its myriad forms. Spiritual practice means fearlessly challenging this fundamental division between self and not-self.

And this is, of course, where psychology and spirituality part ways. Psychology takes as its mission shoring up the ego-self and defending its boundaries, whereas spirituality wants to knock those walls down and return us to a conscious oneness with all things. Does this fundamental divergence of purpose doom the efforts of those who are trying to bring about a marriage between these two seemingly antithetical disciplines? I don't think that it does. But achieving a synthesis will require a radical rethinking of the very nature of the self that psychotherapy aims to heal. The science of psychology will need to move beyond the reigning model of "fixing" the self toward a new paradigm of transcending the small self and selfishness, which lies at the root of all our human problems.

As we increasingly tap into this more spacious self, healing happens. Healing in this way does not mean "suppressing" our self, as Barry Farber implies, or (as some spiritual salesmen suggest) ending our mental suffering once and for all time. What healing does mean is becoming whole. As we are guided to become aware of our own big heart and vast spirit, the so-called problems that once loomed large are placed in proper perspective. We find out that we are so much greater than our problems, indeed greater than anything that life can throw at us. We are enabled to cope with life's inevitable pain (as well as joy) no longer as an embittered and embattled ego, but from a position of inner confidence and strength born of spiritual self knowledge.

Spiritual therapy shares the age old mystical insight that the way to access the greater self is by developing a devotional attitude toward the greater-than-self, which religious believers call variously "God," "Allah," "Buddha Nature," "Jesus," and "the Brahman." Most spiritual therapists, however, are reluctant to preach any particular religious system to their clients. They see their role as facilitators whose task is not to impose belief, but rather to uncover the will to faith and meaning that already exists latent within those who come to them.

With some religiously inclined clients this may include talking about God, prayer, and the great issues of life and death. But spiritual therapy is based on the conviction that all people, and not just religious believers, are motivated to lead rich inner lives. All of us want to feel intimately connected to the Greater Life, whatever we may choose to call it, and to find meaning in our existence. The art of spiritual therapy is to finding out how our own souls are already uniquely striving to awaken, and to support them in their efforts.

Does spiritual therapy trespass on the territory of religion? I don't think so. Religion provides the fundamental moral and mystical principles which are the basis for living a healthy life. Psychology in the years ahead can provide the scientific rigor to test out and develop effective methods to apply these principles to the task of healing. As my visit to the conference on psychotherapy and spirituality showed me, we have a long way to go before the techniques of spiritual therapy--or orthodox psychotherapy, for that matter--are placed on a genuinely scientific basis.

And maybe the whole model is wrong. Maybe what we need is not more studies and a new scientific theory on healing, but a humble acknowledgment that what makes people get better is not so much the expertise of the therapist as the therapist's love and empathetic concern; not so much the psychological knowledge generated in the client as the will to become free; not so much the eradication of the symptoms as the clear seeing that looks beyond the symptoms to the innate wholeness that underlies them.

Readers who would like to explore further the burgeoning field of spiritual therapy can contact: the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy (psychospiritualtherapy.org), the Association for Transpersonal Psychology (atpweb.org), and the Association for Humanist Psychology (ahpweb.org).